


monster

by dreadfulbeauties



Category: East of Eden - John Steinbeck
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Songfic, but it's deffo referenced, cal trask needs a hug, kind of?, the relationship isn't the main focus of the story, vaguely inspired by meg and dia's monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26818789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreadfulbeauties/pseuds/dreadfulbeauties
Summary: They call him Cal at school. They call him Cal at church. They call him Cal at home - "Caleb", sometimes, if his father is feeling stern, which is more often than Cal would like it to be.He calls himself "monster" in the privacy of his head. Because that is what he is.
Relationships: Abra Bacon/Caleb Trask
Kudos: 4





	monster

The dark is both his sanctuary and his prison.

There were many nights spent beside his sleeping brother, staring up at the low ceiling of their little room. _God,_ he’d pray silently, _Please don’t make me evil when I grow up. Don’t make me a monster._

_Monster._

It’s a word that dangles, ready to snap off the lips and tongue of the people around him. They never actually say monster — why would they? — but he knows it is a word that lurks in their mouths. And Cal knows they are right to call him monster, even though he’s the one who braved the fears of what makes the floorboards creak at night, what crawls towards him out of the dark in white (the one time white is not pure and good and innocent and clean like everyone else claims it to be). He remembers nights spent in numb anxiety, anxious over the creatures that hid in his closet and the creature that people thought he was.

He grows into his claws when he gets older, just as Aron grows into his wings. Aron, hair shining bright and blonde as an angel’s halo might. Aron. Human. Good. Not like him.

They call him Cal at school. They call him Cal at church. They call him Cal at home — “Caleb”, sometimes, if his father is feeling stern, which is more often than Cal would like it to be.

He calls himself “monster” in the privacy of his head. Because that is what he is.

He likes Lee, though. Lee knows that he is monstrous, but doesn’t treat him with fake kindness. He is still good to Cal, even knowing he is a monster. Even though they both know he doesn’t deserve it. 

He spends his days beyond in Salinas Valley, looking out over the puffy dandelions poking their way out of the tall green strips of grass, swaying hair-like in the breeze. He knows there are woods beyond the houses he knows, and that he’s got a mother who’s lying in her grave. He wonders what it would be like taking longer and longer walks into those woods. What if he just strayed from the dirt path that kicked up dust and walked further into the foliage a little more each day? Maybe one day he’d just keep going and wouldn’t look back.

But Cal is too much of a coward to do it. He never strays beyond where he’s told not to go, and the sound of birds cooing as night draws closer sends gooseflesh crawling down his skin.

* * *

Abra is kind to him. It isn’t ignorance — she knows what she’s heard is probably true. And besides, she’s supposed to be with Aron. They’ll both get married when they’re older, Cal thinks, because Abra deserves someone like him. Even if an ugly little part of him — well then, maybe he is a monster for thinking that — doesn’t think Aron deserves someone like her.

He worries if he’ll leave her with violet bruises on the thin skin of her wrists if he gets any closer. But he doesn’t.

Abra likes him. She doesn’t see a monster. She sees a person — like her. Aron’s looking for an angel only to find there is none, that’s what she thinks. But Cal? Cal doesn’t see an angel. He sees Abra, face framed by her heavy dark hair and a smile sitting softly on her dimpled face.

They aren’t perfect. They never will be. There are splinters left behind from before, ones that hurt Cal and make him hate himself a little more.

But they can be good.

* * *

Aron gives way easy as glass. And Cal wonders for a moment what he’s done — to his own _brother_. He’d been so angry, told him the truth, watched his face fall apart and only intended to leave behind a few cracks in his wake. But it was more than that. Aron hoped that his mother who he took after would be like him, that the world would be as black and white as he wanted it to be. But it isn’t. 

And now Aron is gone, killed in the Great War that rages on so far away from quiet little Salinas Valley.

Cal hates himself again. It is his fault, he is the monster once more, there is no excuse. It’s his fault. His fault Aron is dead. 

He’s scared. Scared of himself. Scared of love — scared of loving. Scared of Aron. Scared of his father. Scared of a world that is hurt by him and hurts him back. He wonders for a moment if one calm and beautiful night if he can light a fire that swallows him whole like it does the dark. He doesn’t.

_Timshel._ Thou mayest. That’s what his father says to him after his stroke.

He doesn’t know what that word means. He doesn’t know if Abra will still be here after, will love him even though the most human parts of him are the most unsightly, the most hideous. There is so much Cal doesn’t know.

But he clings onto that word, _timshel._ Tattoos it to his veins. He might. He may.

He can be good, now that he knows perfection is out of his and everyone else’s grasps.

And maybe the world can be good enough, too.

**Author's Note:**

> ...so east of eden is my favorite book of all time and i've wanted to write fanfiction for it, but have always been terrified at the prospect of doing because steinbeck's book is so utterly heartbreaking and beautiful and wonderful that i always felt i'd never be able to do it justice. 
> 
> now i am seventeen years old. life is too short, we are all quarantined, i'm taking whatever fears i had and tossing them over my shoulder as i write this. 
> 
> the song "monster" by meg and dia - where i got the title from - was inspired by a specific passage from east of eden that seemed to focus more on cathy ames. but listening to the song, i think it fits cal trask more.
> 
> dear mr. steinbeck: i doubt you're going to be able to see this, but thank you. thank you for writing a book that means so much to me, a book that made me uncomfortable in all the right ways. there's a lot more i could say, but i don't know if i'd be able to say it. 
> 
> thank you for reading. comments are appreciated.


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